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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Circle Drawing Genius At Play

We try to do a lot of art in this house. I'm not an artist, by any means, but I love color, I love expression, and I love to let kids explore. So we do art.

I'm going to attempt to share a little more of our art, largely so that I can look back and reuse ideas (because I tend to forget some of the really cool stuff we do).

Anyhoo ... we scribble - with markers, crayons, chalk, finger paint, dry erase markers (yeah, if you happen to buy the "washable" ones ... be very wary of the blue, just saying), paint and brushes, colored water, pretty much whatever we can. We don't call it scribbling, of course, just coloring, and as they are getting older I'm seeing much more control and determination in their drawing ... very, very cool.

Years ago I heard or read that drawing circles, particularly counter clockwise circles, is a great pre-writing skill, because so many letters use counter clockwise circles.

So a few months ago I taught the kids to draw circles. And they got it. Immediately. It's the genius in them, I swear.

The three year old can draw very neat and tidy closed circles with faces in them, or chocolate chips, or squids ...

The one year olds just draw circles ... and point and say "circle!" And they say "circle" whenever they see circles, so they really do get it.

We're working now on lines, just to add to their repertoire.

(notice the lefty in the bottom photo ... both his father and I are lefties, and of 6 kids he's the only one to inherit that awesome trait)